


Soldiers Three

by Thimblerig



Series: Soldiers Three [1]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Backstory, Friendship, Gen, Mild Gore, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-22
Updated: 2015-06-22
Packaged: 2018-04-05 15:25:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4184943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Which Strangers Meet on the Road, and Are Unsure of Their Direction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soldiers Three

**Author's Note:**

> _\- A possibility of how they got together. I might do more of these, if the mood takes me. (The others would probably be a bit less dreary, though.)_
> 
>  
> 
> _\- There's some suicidal ideation in the middle part of this chapter, because Athos. Actually the whole thing is a bit gory. You have been warned._

"You don't know where you're going?"

"It is of indifference to me."

Porthos rolls his neck reflectively. It is a scene out of a painting - a crossroad, black trees and white snow, a wandering knight on an ink-black horse, and himself, big man, rough man, feet dug into the ground, hailing this stranger. It is a scene out of a painting, but it is also coming on night at the tail end of winter, and the French-Savoy border is dangerous to get lost near. Dangerous for a mounted lord; dangerous for a hired musket two weeks from his last hire.

Porthos sold his shirt three days ago for a serving from a cottager's pot of boiled grain. He keeps his doublet buttoned up so that the lack doesn't show; his earring is only brass but he shined it up bright, and he rolls his shoulders and swings his arms wide out of habit: Court-bred instinct to make himself bigger and brighter, to say _don't fuck with me_ with every scrap of him. Under his gilt and swagger and white-toothed grin his belly yawns, stretched tight like a bubble around emptiness. _One day I will eat the world,_ it howls.

And this little lordling stares down with eyes distant and chilly as the sky. He's not exactly short, but finely built, almost dainty, under his cloak of good Flemish wool. There's money on him and in him, and a glorious sword strung on his belt - jewelled in the hilt, with the worn patina that says it's a working weapon, good at killing. Porthos can't help totting up how much his gear would fetch in the right market. Hell, that beautiful horse, forget about selling it, all that meat carved up right now and seared in a fire... 

And a man on his own falls _so easy_.

But he swallows hard and nods to the stranger. "Stay dry, then, wherever you end up," he says. He promised himself, when he stepped up out of the Court of Miracles, that some things he wouldn't do anymore. What's one more hungry night, anyway? Porthos picks a road of the cross at random. He'll get by. He's strong that way.

As he passes, the little lordling tosses a small bag of coin at him. "Buy yourself a hot dinner on me," he says, without looking back. And it is that - that thoughtless pity - _that_ more than anything that makes Porthos draw his pistol and aim at the rider's stiff back. _One day I will eat the world._

MMM

Afterwards, Athos would never have been able to say if what he wanted was the fight or a quick death. Harsh striving, the beat of blood, every sinew working in concert to grasp at the thread of life? Or one last breath, as the splash of pain releases into quiet? Either way, there would have been blood in the snow, drops of fierce vermillion steaming against the bitter white.

He hasn't truly made a decision for half a year now, not since a meadow, and a tree, and a woman in white and - well, it's been easier not think. His horse seems healthy enough, so clearly he's been remembering to buy grain and get Roger to a warm stable now and then. But Athos cannot, when prompted, recall what has led him to this crossroads, hesitating, as a lion in human form, shabby and glorious, asks him what he has chosen. Perhaps he has been drinking too much wine of late.

He smooths his horse's mane with gloved fingers when the lion speaks again, waiting for the growl to parse itself into language he understands. But the lion moves away, impatient, before he can make an answer in sensible language.

What he knows is that it wasn't kindness that prompted him to throw the money. When he hears a pause in the lion's tread, and the soft slip of leather of a pistol leaving its scabbard his lips curl at the edges. It isn't quite a smile but - good enough. He drifts his hand to the hilt of his father's sword and readies for a sudden turn. But - there is blood on the snow already - he sees it now, tiny drops and splatters leading a trail deeper into the woods.

He holds up a swift hand and says to the lion, "Hold a moment."

MMM

It takes a while, longer than Aramis would like to admit (he has long prided himself on the quickness of his wit), for him to realise that he has to leave them, and he is deeply apologetic you may be sure about that.

He cannot keep the ravens away, is the thing.

He'd prowled through the bodies of his brothers, laying them out as neat as he could manage, St Just next to his special friend Bertillac, du Bois a little apart from all of them on account of liking the quiet (not that he was grumpy, no, just solemn) and all the others according to their likes and dislikes, as far as he knew them. And Aramis was sure and certain that _none_ of them would grudge him taking their powder to keep the birds from pecking at their eyes. 

But his hands shake so, and his head aches. He keeps missing the shots. 

He steadies himself against a tree while he measures out the powder to reload, and the words of an old song flash through his mind:

_He leaned his back against an oak_  
_Thinking it some trusty tree_  
_But first he bended, and then he broke..._

A raven caws and he startles, losing the powder. He curses it where it perches on black branch, staring at him knowingly. Aramis closes his eyes and nods to himself. There is a village nearby. They had stopped there just before reaching their camping place, and he and Marsac had drunk red wine there. He can go there and wake the villagers and they can come and keep the birds away. That would be well.

So he walks and he walks, and he finds the road and then he loses it, baffling thing that it is. He rests again to catch his breath. The raven caws and he lends his croaking voice to its song, _He leaned his back against an oak, first he bended then he broke..._ The ground is listing quite alarmingly now, and the night is coming on, but Aramis is beginning to feel quite warm again. That is well. 

But then he hears voices, and hands are upon him. 

"Marsac, you came back," he says gratefully, but is denied.

"No, I'm nobody of use, I -"

"Of course you would come back, my brother."

The first voice sighs. "I will be whatever you like if you just get on the fucking horse."

"Alright then."

The other, with a voice as warm as his hands, asks, "Where to, mate?"

He answers, "The Hotel de Treville, in Paris. The Musketeer Garrison."

_fini_

**Author's Note:**

>  _his belly yawns, stretched tight like a bubble around emptiness._ \- I may have lifted this from R. A. MacAvoy's _Lens of the World_. "The black wolf of Gelley, with nothing in its belly," was a compelling image.
> 
>  _First he bended, then he broke_ \- a verse from an English folk song, actually, because I don't know too many French ones. (Call it cultural translation and please forgive me.) Alas, I cannot remember the name off the top of my head.
> 
>  _He can go there and wake the villagers and they can come and keep the birds away._ \- Ah, the joys of decision-making when you're in shock, where you might do the right thing, but for a really stupid reason...  
>  _if you just get on the fucking horse_ \- in this continuity, at least, that's the only time in his life Athos ever really swore...


End file.
